Applescript failing even though variables are equal

applescript

I have a file that is a list of numbers like so:

01

02

03

04

…

241

242

However, this was generated from a list of files so I am not sure if it contains all the numbers in sequence from start to end, inclusive (Meaning it might be "13 15" instead of "13 14 15").

My applescript checks for that, and although it seemed like it was going it be simple, my applescript fails at the number 10 and beyond, even though my dialogues say that the numbers x and y are both equal. And by fail I mean it is telling me the numbers 10 and on are missing even though it shouldnt be, because x is equal to y at that point.

Here is my applescript, and the list can be found here.

set x to 0

repeat 242 times

    set x to x + 1
    if x is less than 10 then
        set x to "0" & x
    end if

    display dialog "x is set to " & x

    #Get's the x'th line of the file and sets it to y
    set y to do shell script "sed -n '" & x & "p' ~/Desktop/numlist.txt"

    display dialog "y result is " & y

    if y is not equal to x then
            display dialog "The number " & x & " is missing!"
        #exit repeat 
    end if

end repeat

Best Answer

Your x values are strings when the value is less than ten (because you use string concatenation to prepend a zero), however they are plain numbers when the value is greater than or equal to ten.

Your y values are always strings.

So, for values less than ten, your final comparison compares a string to a string; this works as expected. For higher values, the comparison will always yield false because it is comparing a number to a string.

If you want exact string matches, then you can use use this comparison code:

if y is not equal to x as string then …

If you only care about numeric values, then you could remove the zero-prefixing code and use this comparison:

if y as number is not equal to x then …

Equivalently, you could do the coercion when you fetch the y value:

set y to (do shell script "sed -n '" & x & "p' ~/Desktop/numlist.txt") as number

The parentheses are necessary there because do shell script has its own optional as parameter that is not the same as normal coercion.

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